TED吉姆·霍尔：宇宙为何存在？

Why does the universe exist?Why is there …

—Okay. Okay. (Laughter)

This is a cosmic（宇宙的；巨大且重要的 mystery.Be solemn.（表情严肃的; 庄严的）

Why is there a world, why are we in it, and where is there something rather than nothing at all? I mean, this is the super ultimate（最后的；终极的）“Why” question. So I’m going to talk about the mystery of existence, the puzzle of existence, where we are now in addressing it, and why you should care, and I hope you do care.

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (亚瑟·叔本华) said that those who don’t wonder about the contingency（偶发事件：偶然性）of their existence ,of the contingency of the world’s existence, are mentally deficient.（缺乏的;缺少的;有缺陷的人或东西）

That’s a little harsh,（刺耳的）but still.(Laughter)

So this has been called the most sublime(崇高的；令人赞叹的) and awesome mystery, the deepest and most far-reaching question man can pose.

It’s obsessed（使痴迷）great thinkers.

Ludwig Wittgenstein，(路德维希·维特根斯坦) perhaps the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, was astonished that there should be a world at all.He wrote in his“Tractatus”(Tractatus Logico—Philosophicus)(《逻辑哲学论》)Proposition4.66,“It’s not how things are in the world that is the mystical, it’s that the world exists.”

And if you don’t like taking your epigrams（警句） from a philosopher, try a great physicists of the 20th century, the teacher of Picard Feynman,(理查德·费曼)the coiner（创造者） of the term “black hole”, he said,“I want to know how come the quantum,（量子） how come the universe, how come the existence?” And my friend Martin Amis(马丁·艾米斯)— sorry that I’ll be doing a lot of name-dropping in this talk, so get used to it— (Laughter)

My dear friend Martin Amis once said that we’re about five Einsteins（爱因斯坦）away from answering the mystery of where the universes come from.

And I’ve no doubt there are five Einsteins in the audience tonight. Any Einsteins? Show of hands? No? No? No? No Einsteins? Okay.

So the question, why is there something rather than nothing, this sublime question, was posed rather late in intellectual history. (思想史)

It was towards the end of the 17th century, the philosopher Leibniz(莱布尼兹)who asked it, a very smart guy, Leibniz, who invented the calculus(微积分) independently of Isaac·Newton，(艾萨克·牛顿) at about the same time, but for Leibniz who asked why is there something rather than nothing, this is not a great mystery.

He either or pretended to be an Orthodox(普遍接受的；正统信仰的) Christian in his metaphysical(形而上学) outlook he said it’s obvious why the world exists: because the God created it.

And God created, indeed, out of nothing at all. That’s how powerful God is. He doesn’t need any preexisting materials to fashion(塑造) a world out of. He can make it out of sheer(完全的；绝对的)nothingness, creation ex nihilo.(创世论)

And by the way, this is what most Americans today believe. There is no mystery of existence for them. God made it.

So let’s put this in an equation. I don’t have any slides（幻灯片;滑梯）so I’m going to mime(用哑剧动作表现) my visuals(视觉的；视觉资料) so use your imaginations. So it’s God+nothing=the world. Okay? Now that’s the equation.

And so maybe you don’t believe in God. Maybe you are a scientific atheist(无神论者)or an unscientific atheist, and you don’t believe in God, and you’re not happy with it.

By the way, even if we have this equation God + nothing = the world. There’s already a problem：Why does God exist? God doesn’t exist by logic alone unless you believe the ontological argument(本体论) and I hope you don’t. Because it’s not a good argument.

So it’s conceivable, (可想象的) if God were to exist, he might wonder ,I’m eternal，(不朽的；永恒的)I’m all-powerful, but where did I come from？Whence then am I? （Laughter）

And so one theory is that God was bored with pondering(思考；深思熟虑) the puzzle of his existence that he created the world just to distract himself.

But anyway, let’s forget about God. Take God out of the equation: we have ____+ nothing = the world.

Now ,if you’re a Buddhist, you might want to stop there, because essentially what you’ve got is nothing = the world, and by symmetry(对称；相等) of identity, that means the world = nothing. Okay? And to a Buddhist, the world is just a whole lot of nothing. It’s just a big cosmic vacuity.（空白; 空虚; 茫然）And we think there’s a lot of something out of there but that’s because we are enslaved (奴役; 使受控制) by our desires. If we let out desires melt away, we’ll see the world for what it truly is, a vacuity, nothingness, and we’ll slip into this happy state of nirvana(涅槃) which has been defined as having just enough life to enjoy being dead. (Laughter)

So that’s the Buddhist thinking. But I’m a Westerner, and I’m still concerned with the puzzle of existence, so I’ve got ____+ this is going to get serious in a minutes, so ____+ nothing = the world. What are we going to put in that blank? Well, how about science? Science is our best guide to the nature of reality, and the most fundamental science is physics. That tells us what naked(赤裸裸) reality really is.

I called TAUFOTU the True and Ultimate Furniture of the Universe. So maybe physics can fill this blank, and indeed, since about the late 1960s or 1970, physicis have purported(自称) to give a scientific explanation of how a universe like ours should have popped(发声) into existence out of sheer nothingness, a quantum fluctuation(波动) out of the void.（空白；空虚；空洞）Stephen Hawking(斯蒂芬·霍金) is one of these physicists, more recently Alex Vile kin，(亚历克斯·维兰金) and the whole thing has been popularized by another very fine physicist and friend of mine, Lawrence Krauss，(劳伦斯) who wrote a book called“A Universe from Nothing”(《无中生有》)and Lawrence thinks that he’s given—he’s a militant(激进的)atheist, by the way, so he’s gotten God out of the picture.

The laws of quantum field theory, the state-of-the-art-physics, can show how out of sheer nothingness, no space, no time, no matter ,nothing, a little nugget(有价值的小东西) of false vacuum(真空) can fluctuate into existence, and then, by the miracle of inflation, blow up into this huge and variegated(斑驳的)cosmos（尤指被视为有序体系的宇宙；大波斯菊）we see around us.

Okay, this is a really ingenious(巧妙的) scenario.(方案；前景；可能发生的情况；脚本) It’s fascinating. But I’ve got a big problem with it, and the problem is this: it’s a pseudo-religious(伪宗教)point of view.

Now, Lawrence thinks he’s an atheist, but he’s still in thrall(束缚)头a religious worldview. He sees physical laws as being like divine(神)commands. The laws of quantum field theory for him are like fiat lux“let there be light”. The laws have sort of ontological power or clout(影响力；势力) that they can from the abyss(深渊) that it’s pregnant with being. They can call a word into existence out of nothing.

But that’s a very primitive view of what a physical law is, right? We know that physical laws are actually generalized(笼统的；普遍的) descriptions of patterns and regularities(法则；规律性)in the world. They don’t exist outside the world. They don’t have any ontic（本体的；实体的） cloud of their own. They can’t cell a world into existence out of nothingness. That’s a very primitive view of what a scientific law is. And if you don’t believe me on this, listen to Stephen Hawking, who himself put forward a model of cosmos that was self-contained, didn’t require any outside cause, any creator,(创物主) and after proposing this, Hawking admitted

TED吉姆